“We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
—Marianne Williamson, abridged

Who Do You Inspire?

It’s a question we all too often forget to ask ourselves.

Take a few seconds to answer it.

One thing I promise you is that there are people out there who look to you to help them find their way. They admire something (if not everything) about how you live your life.

This is a responsibility we all share.

Once we realize this, the real question becomes: What type of life am I going to live to take my responsibility seriously?

So today is about you.

Last week 197 of you told us your Passion Projects – and what you’re doing to Live Your Own Legends.

You showed us how you plan to help and inspire those around you. And I was blown away, as I am any time I interact with our community.

I could not have asked for a better birthday present.

Thank you for sharing with us – the 31 winners of The Alchemist will be contacted shortly.

The crazy thing is as of this morning there are 34,420 of us in this community – all with a Passion Project dying to be set free on the world.

Imagine the impact that could cause.

It starts with the belief in possibility…

Our biggest goal at Live Your Legend is to inspire you to believe in what’s possible – and then to provide you with the tools to do it yourself. The best way I know of doing this is to show “everyday” people like you and me doing the things most of the world only dreams of.

That is the purpose of these Living Legends Reader Spotlights. And it gives you the chance to help support the dreams of our community.

Now, let the possibility unfold and pick one of the below people to help out in some way. We all thank you for it.

I absolutely LOVE these posts – enjoy!

6 Mini Case Studies of Live Your Legend Members Changing the World

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1. Helping Young High School & College Women Dream Bigger than Society Usually Permits

Living Legend: Stacy Taubman

Location: St. Louis, Missouri

Why and How Stacy is Making an Impact:

I have been a teacher and coach for over ten years, and I am setting out to make a huge impact on young women’s lives. I want to build a community similar to LYL but for high school and college age women. Girls so often feel alone and isolated. They don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents, and their friends are ill-equipped to help them.

My company is called Girls Dreaming Big and I hope to help them do just that. I want to offer any and every service that helps young women feel a part of something bigger than themselves and provides them the tools to achieve their dreams.

How you can help:

I know how alone girls can feel in college and high school, trying to fit in and having so many pressures to deal with. Please share our free resources with the young women and girls who need them. We’re here to help!

Fun fact: Sadly, no matter how stupid the show or movie is, if there is gymnastics or dance involved, I still love it!!! Oh, and I found my amazing website designer and brand consultant, Lis Dingjan, through the Live Your Legend Facebook group!

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2. Started a Non-Profit Fund to Save His Brother & Best Friend from a Coma

Living Legend: Jason Schonhoft

Location: Indianapolis, Indiana

Why and How Jason is Making an Impact:

My little brother fell down a set of unforgiving concrete steps and suffered a brain injury, leaving him in a coma. He’s 22 years old and a student at Purdue University studying mechanical engineering. He’s my best friend in life and I’d do anything for him.

A few days after the accident, I started racking my brain for ways that I could help him through this. The only thing I could think of was to raise money for him and raise awareness of his situation.

Before I was aware of my audience and the extent of his injuries, I set a goal to raise $25,000 on Fundly.com. We have already raised 53% of that goal. I also set up a website to sell WakeJake t-shirts and wrist bands. So far I have raised a little over $20,000!

How you can help:

I’d like to raise a total of $50,000 for my brother to cover his medical bills since he does not have insurance, our mother’s insurance isn’t very good and our father passed away six years ago. I’d also like for this to branch into me living my legend. I’d love for you to pick up some WakeJake merchandise or donate to the cause!

Fun fact: I love inspiring people and making my friends happy. I’m also very adventurous and love traveling, snowboarding, mountain biking and rock climbing.

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3. Ex-Lawyer Launches Athletic Bag Business to Support Girls’ Sports in Developing Countries

Living Legend: Katie Rock

Location: Manhattan Beach, California

Why and How Katie is Making an Impact:

After finding out that sports actually have huge benefits for girls (girls who play sports are healthier, happier, more educated, less likely to get pregnant as a teen, etc.), I committed to doing something about it. Girls in many developing countries don’t have access to sports, so I’m launching Activyst, a company that creates women’s athletic bags and funds girls sports projects worldwide.

Being active was a huge part of my childhood and is a huge part of who I am. I actually spent a couple years working on promoting sports for girls in Nicaragua with the World Health Organization. After discovering that a huge barrier for girls is the simple lack of funding and opportunities, I decided to find a way to generate more funding and awareness to this cause. Through Activyst, I hope to do that.

How you can help:

The single-most helpful thing anyone can do to make this happen is go to our Indie GoGo page and watch our fun video! Then click the FB “like” button under our video and write in the FB share box that appears: “Just learned about Activyst, a company that creates athletic bags for women and funds girls’ sports programs worldwide. Check them out and help more girls play!”

You can also buy a bag or donate to the cause too – on that same page. Every bit helps!

If we reach our goal, we can start bag production and build a field for Soccer Without Borders girls in Nicaragua.

Fun fact: I was the only girl with three brothers. They never took it easy on me – e.g. they called me fivehead because my “four-head” was bigger than most! They toughened me up and taught me to not take myself too seriously.

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4. Ultra-Endurance Athlete Leverages His Energy to Support Causes Around the World

Living Legend: Mike Herzog

Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Why and How Mike is Making an Impact:

GoodGuysTri is a collection of endurance athletes/regular people who “leverage our passion for endurance sport to do Good.” As the founder, I have long been involved in volunteer work and fundraising because it fills my spiritual cup! GoodGuysTri inspires its followers to live life intentionally – with meaning, clear purpose and with compassion.

As a team, we continually set athletic and non-athletic goals way beyond our personal limitations, both to inspire others when we accomplish not only individual personal bests but (having tied them to fundraising, awareness, and/or greater meaning) truly embrace an ideology to change the world for the better. In just over a year we have engaged in helping the homeless, the hungry, youth initiatives, impossible2Possible, children’s hospitals, and ending violence against women.

Fun fact: I am just like you. Trying to make sense of a world that often leaves me scratching my head … which reinvigorates my efforts to “do good” and put a smile on someone else’s face.

[Note from Scott: Hat tip to Mike for supporting the LYL official partner charity, impossible2Possible – such an amazing organization!]

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5. On a Quest to Make Everyone’s Dream Vacation Possible by Teaching How to Travel the World on $50 a Day

Living Legend: Matthew Kepnes

Location: New York, New York

Why and How Matt is Making an Impact:

I run the travel website Nomadic Matt (nomadicmatt.com) and I help people travel cheaper, longer, and better. I think travel can make you a better person – it made me one. There’s so much in the world to see that it’s a sin that people think it’s “too expensive to travel.” I help show people that travel isn’t expensive, and once you break out the hotel/resort/cruise dynamic, costs come down a lot and any dream vacation suddenly becomes a much closer reality.

In 2005, I was traveling to Thailand and I met five backpackers who changed my life by just existing. I had never met people like that before and they showed me that long-term travel was possible. In 2006, I set out for a year trip around the world – one I am still on 6.5 years later. I want to do what those people did for me and help others see the world.

How you can help:

I recently published my first book How to Travel The World on $50 a Day. So you could help by buying my book! No, just kidding. Well, not really. Honestly, I’m here to help you guys. Reach out and let me know!

Fun fact: I once got lost in a jungle in Costa Rica because I read the map wrong. Rookie mistake I never made again.

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6. Former Lawyer Turned 4-Year Vagabond Publishes a Book on How to Leverage Food as the Ultimate International Connection Tool

Living Legend: Jodi Ettenberg

Location: 4-month stays in different countries, currently in Vietnam

Why and How Jodi is Making an Impact:

I started out my travels without focusing on food, but as time went on, I began to see what I ate as an ideal connective node to the places I visited. A plate of rice and pork wasn’t just something to give me energy, it was a portal to learning about the history of my current location and understanding how that history affected what people ate. After about four years of travel with increasing focus on food, I wrote The Food Traveler’s Handbook, a guide not only to why food matters as we travel, but also how to find it and eat it safely. I have celiac disease, so the book also includes a section on food restrictions and allergies, as well as a long resources chapter.

In talking to others, I realized that many people wanted to see food the way I did, but they were also afraid of getting sick – a very valid fear. So I was inspired to reach people by sharing not just the practical, but also some of my stories in eating my way around the world, hoping that they would resonate and spur travelers to use food as a tool for learning and understanding. Ultimately if the book convinces someone to use food as a learning tool, then I am happy!

Fun fact: Despite loving food, I hate olives. I’ve tried them all over the world and I just cannot seem to enjoy them. It’s definitely a contentious topic – people either love or hate ’em! But I’m firmly on the “hate” side. 🙂

*****

I’ll Ask Again – Who Do You Inspire?

Or better yet, who could you be inspiring if you were doing what really mattered to you?

Thank you all for continuing to write and live your story in a way that inspires possibility, not only in me and this community, but in everyone you interact with.

P.S. Please pick one of the projects above and spend at least 2 to 5 minutes learning more about their mission, and find some way, big or small, to support the impact they intend to have on the world. Remember, no one does anything on their own.

For the comments: Share your reaction to their Passion Projects or an idea or way you can help one of them (email readers click here). Thanks for the support!

18 Comments

Thank you LYL / Scott! What an honour to be included on your site and amongst so many wonderful people. Stacy, Jodi, Matthew, Katie and Jason – WOW! The work of GoodGuysTri has been a privilege and truly reflects the work and I can not NOT do! LYL and community – find your passion and fill your spiritual cup with greatness! You inspire!!

Stacy

Wow! Thank you Scott and LYL. I am so grateful for all you do! Your
passion for helping people and inspiring them to go after their dreams
is amazing!!! I echo Katie’s and Mike’s sentiment. To be included in
such an amazing group of people is an honor! I am so excited to be on
this journey and hopefully make a huge impact on young women’s lives!!!

I love that you feature people doing amazing things in these types of posts Scott – we should have more of this! There are sooooo many people doing incredible things in their daily lives that never get recognized but highlighting them drowns out the negative news of the world every day…and the ole’ ripple effect of positivity 🙂 Imagine if we all did this 🙂
Special congratulations to Stacy too – it’s been wonderful to work with you and you’re doing something brilliant for young women that I know is going to get bigger and bigger. Exciting!

JT Schonhoft

I was very surprised when reading this to see myself as #2! I feel honored to be featured for something I did out of pure love for my brother. It ended up turning into something amazing since we surpassed our goal. I wanted to take this moment to let everyone know on here that my brother is actually doing VERY WELL now. He’s almost fully recovered and back to a normal life. He will be getting his license to drive at the end of May and will go back to Purdue in the fall. I believe we paid off his last medical bill today, actually – hopefully. Recently I’ve been receiving lots of notifications of people making donations and was wondering why so many people I didn’t know were making rather large donations. Then I read this post and found out why 😉 – Thanks so much for featuring me. I truly believe that the simple fact that the word was spread to so many people and so many people made donations that the universe made sure he made a full recovery. This whole thing inspired me to actually join your course. Now that my brother is just about fully recovered, it’s time for me to transfer this inspiration into something else I can do to change the world. This course will point me in the right direction. Now I just need to get back to the modules 😉

Thanks!

(here is a rather recent picture of my brother(left) and I. He is much more in shape since this picture since he’s been in the gym a lot.)

Fun fact: Natalie does not have a home (hence why she calls herself the suitcase entrepreneur). She travels the world helping people build businesses and she just biked halfway across Africa to raise money to help struggling women!

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Eliza Hamilton

Wow.. I’m late to this.. Hi
I feel so young here 😅
Hi I’m an 11 year old girl who has gone through depression. Has overcome it and realized that this world is seriously corrupting. Our world is beautiful but has been horribly hurt. I want to make the kind of change that people will remember and be inspired by. I want every child to have an ACTUAL childhood. I know some people online who have been abused. My friend also told me about her friends’ Dad cut off her tongue because “she talked too much” I straight away became extremely pissed off that a human being had that much pain built into his mind to do such a thing.
NO ONE would EVER deserve that kind of torture. I’ve never gone through anything serious but I still know I need to help. Whenever I talk to my friends about this kind of thing they’ll always say “Can we switch the subject?”. I honestly get that it’s deep, but people need to be heard. If no one is gonna search deeper, I’ll be the one to take a stand and I WILL. We only have one life to live. Some people waste that, some life for fun, some don’t even WANT to live. The only reason why I’m still alive is the one question that I always wonder about.. What’s gonna happen tomorrow? What am I gonna do tomorrow? What can I do tomorrow to help this world.. we’ve had many wars just for peace. Wars DO NOT create peace. It burdens the world even more.. We as a union of the same species should NOT argue so much we decide on WAR. War in my own definition is sending human beings to fight their own kind, to kill each other for “peace”. I hope this gets heard. 💜